Purple Rain (album)

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Purple Rain
Soundtrack by Prince and The Revolution
Released	June 25, 1984
Recorded	August 1983–March 1984 First Avenue St. Louis Park warehouse Sunset Sound (Minneapolis, Minnesota)
Genre	Pop, rock, R&B, funk, neo-psychedelia, new wave, Minneapolis
Length	43:52
Label	Warner Bros. Records 25110
Producer	Prince and The Revolution
Professional reviews
Allmusic link BBC Music (favorable) link Robert Christgau (A-) link Entertainment Weekly (B) link IGN (10.0/10) link Rolling Stone 2000 Rolling Stone 2004 [1] Spin (9/10) link Yahoo! Music (favorable) link
Prince chronology
1999 (1982) Purple Rain (1984) Around the World in a Day (1985)
Singles from Purple Rain
"When Doves Cry" Released: May 1984 "Let's Go Crazy" Released: July 1984 "Purple Rain" Released: September 1984 "I Would Die 4 U" Released: November 1984 "Take Me with U" Released: January 1985

Purple Rain is an album by Prince and The Revolution, the soundtrack to the film of the same name.

Purple Rain is regularly ranked among the best albums in rock music history. Time magazine ranked it the 15th greatest album of all time in 1993, and it placed 18th on VH1's Greatest Rock and Roll Albums of All Time countdown. Rolling Stone magazine ranked it the second-best album of the 1980s and 72nd on their list of the 500 Greatest Albums of All Time. Zounds magazine ranked it the 18th greatest album of all time. Furthermore, the album placed 4th in Plásticos y Decibelios' list of The Greatest Albums of All Time. Finally, in 2007, the editors of Vanity Fair labeled it the best soundtrack of all time and Tempo magazine named it the greatest album of the 1980s.^[2]

The 1000th issue of Entertainment Weekly dated July 4, 2008 listed Purple Rain at number one on their list of the top 100 best albums of the past 25 years.^[3] The RIAA lists it as having gone platinum 13 times over.^[4]

[edit] Background

It was released by Warner Bros. Records on June 25, 1984, and was Prince's sixth album. Prince wrote all of the songs on the album, some with the input of fellow band members. Some of the tracks had portions recorded live when Prince performed on August 3, 1983, at the First Avenue club in Minneapolis. This show was a benefit concert for the Minnesota Dance Theater. It was also the first appearance in Prince's band "The Revolution" by Wendy Melvoin, his guitarist in the Purple Rain film and for a few years afterwards.

[edit] Music

Purple Rain was the first Prince album recorded with and officially credited to his backing group the Revolution. The resulting album was musically denser than Prince's previous one-man albums, emphasizing full band performances, and multiple layers of guitars, keyboards, icy electronic synthesizer effects, drum machines, and other instruments. Musically, Purple Rain remained grounded in the electro-funk and R&B elements of Prince's previous work while demonstrating a more pronounced rock feel in its grooves and emphasis on guitar showmanship. As a soundtrack record, much of the music had a grandiose, synthesized, and even—by some evaluations—a vaguely psychedelic sheen to the production and performances. The music on Purple Rain is generally regarded as the most pop-oriented of Prince's career, though a number of elements point towards the more experimental pop/psychedelic records Prince would record after Purple Rain. As with many massive crossover albums, Purple Rain's consolidation of a myriad of styles, from pop rock to urban R&B to dance, is generally acknowledged to account in part for its enormous popularity.

In addition to the record's breakthrough sales, music critics noted the innovative and experimental aspects of the soundtrack's music, most famously on the spare, bass-less "When Doves Cry", which was frequently identified as pop at its most avant-garde. Other aspects of the music, especially its synthesis of electronic elements with organic instrumentation and full-band performances (some, as noted above, recorded live) along with its landmark consolidation of rock and R&B, were identified by critics as distinguishing, even experimental factors. Stephen Erlewine of Allmusic writes that Purple Rain finds Prince "consolidating his funk and R&B roots while moving boldly into pop, rock, and heavy metal" and identifies the record's nine songs as "uncompromising...forays into pop" and "stylistic experiments", echoing general sentiment that Purple Rain's music represented Prince at his most popular without forsaking his experimental bent.^[5]

"Take Me with U" was originally written for the Apollonia 6 album, but was later pulled for Purple Rain. An unfortunate result of this addition was making crucial cuts to the suite-like "Computer Blue", which circulates amongst collectors in a superior, though unreleased extended version (a portion of this second section of "Computer Blue" can be heard in the film Purple Rain as Prince walks in on the men of The Revolution rehearsing). The song "Darling Nikki" is notable for its lyrical content,^[6] which eventually led to the use of Parental Advisory stickers and imprints on album covers by ways of Tipper Gore and the Parents Music Resource Center.

[edit] Reception

Prince won three Grammy Awards: for Best Rock Vocal Performance by a Duo or Group, Best Album of Original Score Written for a Motion Picture or TV Special (Purple Rain), and Best R&B Song (songwriter) (Chaka Khan's "I Feel for You") and was nominated for Album of the Year (Purple Rain). "Purple Rain" also won an Oscar for Best Original Song Score in 1985.^[7]

Purple Rain sold 13 million units in the United States, earning a Diamond Award from the Recording Industry Association of America. According to Billboard magazine, the album spent 24 consecutive weeks at #1 on the Billboard album charts (August 4, 1984 to January 18, 1985) becoming one of the top soundtracks ever. Purple Rain traded the #1 album chart position with Bruce Springsteen's Born in the U.S.A. twice, during 1984 and 1985. Two songs from Purple Rain, "When Doves Cry" and "Let's Go Crazy", would top the U.S. singles charts and were hits around the world, while the title track would go to number two on the Billboard Hot 100. The album has sold more than 20 million copies worldwide.^[8]

The 25th anniversary of the release of Purple Rain was on June 25, 2009. Aside from the mention of it as the cover story in a recent issue of Spin Magazine, it was virtually overshadowed as, ironically, the deaths of television legend Farrah Faucet & pop music icon Michael Jackson occurred the same day.

[edit] Track listing

All songs composed and arranged by Prince; except "Computer Blue", words by Prince music by Prince, John L. Nelson, Wendy and Lisa, and Dr. Fink.

Side one

1. "Let's Go Crazy" – 4:39
2. "Take Me with U" – 3:58
3. "The Beautiful Ones" – 5:17
4. "Computer Blue" – 3:56
5. "Darling Nikki" – 4:13

Side two

1. "When Doves Cry" – 5:52
2. "I Would Die 4 U" – 2:49
3. "Baby I'm a Star" – 4:24
4. "Purple Rain" – 8:41

[edit] Test pressing

The track listing to the November 7, 1983 test pressing^[9]:

1. "Let's Go Crazy"
2. "The Beautiful Ones"
3. "Darling Nikki"
4. "Wednesday"
5. "Purple Rain"
6. "I Would Die 4 U"
7. "Baby, I'm a Star"
8. "Father's Song"
9. "When Doves Cry"

[edit] Chart history

Chart procession and succession

[edit] Personnel

• Prince: Guitars, bass guitar, keyboards, piano, vocals
• Brown Mark: Bass guitar, vocals
• Lisa Coleman: Keyboards, piano, sitar, vocals
• Wendy Melvoin: Guitars, vocals
• Dr. Fink: Keyboards, organ, vocals
• Bobby Z.: Drums, percussion
• Apollonia Kotero: Vocals on "Take Me with U"
• David Coleman: Violin
• Suzie Katayama: Violin, viola
• Novi Novog: Violin, viola

[edit] Notes

[edit] References

• Nathan Brackett, Christian Hoard (2004). The New Rolling Stone Album Guide: Completely Revised and Updated 4th Edition. Simon and Schuster. ISBN 0-74320-169-8. 

[edit] External links

• Purple Rain at Discogs